22 Dec 2016

Snapdeal Offers to Deliver Cash to Your Home

HIGHLIGHTS

Snapdeal is offering to deliver Rs. 2,000 to your home

No additional purchase is necessary, the company says

The offering is currently in select areas in Gurugram and Bengaluru

Snapdeal on Thursday announced the launch of a new facility called Cash@Home, which allows people to order the delivery of Rs. 2000. The way it works is simple - you need to install the Snapdeal app, and it uses your location data to check if there is cash available in your area. According to Snapdeal, if cash if available, you'll get a push notification and an SMS notification, taking you to the order page.

You have to pay a convenience fee of Rs. 1, either via FreeCharge or using your debit card. The next day, a Snapdeal logistics executive arrives at your house with a POS machine, and you can swipe your card and get your cash. There is a Rs. 2,000 per day limit on the booking, and you don't have to order anything else. The service is currently live in parts of Gurugram and Bengaluru, and only works through the app.

According to Snapdeal, the money is being distributed as a "goodwill gesture", and comes from the money it receives as CoD. A cynic would point out that this also frees up the company from having to deposit the cash in its own bank account, as it uses customers to turn its cash into a digital form. And, since the offer is only extended to app users, based around push notifications, it also helps ensure that people install the app, and keep it on their phones. That being said, for customers who are strapped for cash because of long ATM queues, this offering is a pretty big boon to have available.

"At Snapdeal, we aim to be the marketplace that seamlessly services every customer need," says Rohit Bansal, co-founder, Snapdeal. "As the country transitions to a more digitally enabled economy, we’ve launched a series of timely initiatives – from wallet and card on delivery, to extending FreeCharge partnerships to smoothen this transition. The launch of the cash on demand service is intended to further help our consumers tide over any cash crunch that they might face in addressing their daily needs.”

Snapdeal isn't the first tech company to offer a cash delivery service though. At the start of December, Tailmill - a Noida l-based company that delivers groceries and uses algorithms to automatically build your shopping list - started to offer home delivery of cash, up to Rs. 1000, in partnership with flour seller TWF Flours.

Like Snapdeal, Tailmill was also recirculating the cash it collected through cash-on-delivery offers. Midway through December, Grofers jumped on the bandwagon offering a similar service in partnership with Yes Bank. This was offered to users across Mumbai, Gurugram, and Bengaluru.

However, unlike Snapdeal, in the case of Grofers, you also need to order groceries worth Rs. 2,000 to get cash delivered.

“Grofers, the on-demand e-commerce mobile and Web application, is opening up a new avenue for people to get cash delivered at home, by partnering with Yes Bank,” the bank had said in a mailed statement.

Yes Bank had also partnered with Ola to set up mobile ATMs earlier in the month.